For years now, the Ticketmaster experience has been defined by hitting the checkout button and seeing the price of your ticket purchase jump, sometimes nearly double, thanks to so-called “service fees.” Finally, that is going to change. No, Ticketmaster isn’t getting rid of the service charges. But it will now display the full cost of […]
Your Brain Data Is for Sale, Senators Warn
The fledgling neurotechnology space is filled with products that promise all sorts of utility by reading your brainwaves. Whether they actually accomplish much functionality is debatable, but they are apparently succeeding at monetizing the data they collect from your brain. In a letter sent to the Federal Trade Commission, Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer, Maria Cantwell, […]
Airbnb to Show Full Price by Default Thanks to Biden-Era Rule
The price that you see on an Airbnb listing will finally be the price that you actually pay. On Monday, the rental app announced that it will display the full price of a stay, including fees and taxes (in most locations), by default from the start of listings worldwide. The shift in pricing policy comes […]
Ousted FTC Commissioners Sue Trump Over Firings
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission who were fired earlier this month by President Donald Trump without a specific cause, are suing Donald Trump and FTC leadership over their oustings. The lawsuit sets up a potential showdown regarding presidential authority as it relates to independent agencies. […]
Trump’s FTC Deletes Blogs Critical of Amazon and Microsoft
For a brief period, maybe even just a second, it seemed as though the populism built into the Donald Trump campaign just might preserve the Lina Khan theory of Big Tech regulation at the Federal Trade Commission. Turns out, not so much. Wired first reported that more than 300 blog posts critical of companies like […]
New FTC Chair Fighting DEI, Cuts Off Public Comments on Surveillance Pricing
While Lina Khan spent much of her four years at the head of the Federal Trade Commission fighting to break up monopolies and combat price gauging, it appears Donald Trump’s new FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has zeroed in on a singular supposed cause for all of the economic problems: DEI. Sitting Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya doesn’t […]